muttley hates software: XIII

From: Simon Wistow
Date: 10:28 on 03 Feb 2004
Subject: XIII
A first, I think, on hates software - a games hate.
To be honest I quite like the game - a conspiracy based FPS based on a
Belgian comic with stylish cel shading done with much more flair than
usual - lots of nice comic book touches. In general it's fun to play -
nothing world shattering but not terrible by any strecth of the
imagination.
However it does have some HATEFUL things.And it is these that I shall
expand on.
For a start, you can't skip the cut scenes. This in and of itself is
enough to condemn the makers to enternal hell being used as the jizz
bucket of a thousand hairy backed pederasts. Especially since they're
long. And voiced by David 'Monotone' Duchovny.
The problem is compounded by the god awful save system. You can save but
it only saves you back at the last checpoint. And it doesn't 'remember'
when you finished a level - you have to tell it to. And the checkpoints
are at stupid places like just before a cut scene so that everytime you
die you have to go back and watch it again. And feel the urge to hurt
yourself rising.
And when you do die the first highlighted button int the menu is ....
controls. Not retry. Controls. Like the designers thought that your
first thought on getting slotted by a wandering SPAD soldier is to
invert the look control or something.
In fact who knows what the designers were thinking - they commit many of
the cardinal sins of game design. You're encouraged to knock out people
stealthily with chairs ... but only some chairs can be picked up. And if
you pick up a chair and then realise you actually need to do something
else first then you have to break the chair. Which means you may be
left without a chair to do your stealthy dirty work with.
Sometimes, to get further in a game, you have to activate a certain
trigger. Which is fine if it just works but lousy if it doesn't. One bit
of the game you have to listen at the door whilst a receptionists talks
to a doctor. That, for some reason, triggers a security guard going into
another, previously locked room which lets you kill him and then get a
swipe card to get into another part. Why? fuck only knows. Oh, and if
you die, you have to do it again - wait by the door listening to the
conversation whilst he wends his way back to that room again.
GAHHHH! Hate!
Simon